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Women of the Italian Renaissance | SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA (c.1532-1625)

Sofonisba Anguissola was one of the first great female painters of the Renaissance, praised by her contemporaries not only for her technical competence, but for her ability to imbue her subjects with lifelike qualities. Giorgio Vasari described her portraits as “executed so well that they appear to be breathing and absolutely alive”, “lacking nothing except speech”, while another biographer called her “a musician, writer and above all an exceptionally fine painter” — a true Renaissance woman.

Sofonisba was born in Cremona, Lombardy, into a noble family that had fallen on difficult financial times. Despite his monetary troubles, her father Amilcare saw to it that Sofonisba, her brother and five sisters all received a respectable humanist education as well as training in music and painting. During her teenage years, Sofonisba studied under the tutelage of local painters Bernardino Campi and Bernardino Gatti. Her father eagerly promoted her talents throughout her early career, and at one stage arranged for the legendary Michelangelo to be shown one of her drawings, a picture of a laughing child. The great artist admitted that she had talent, but added that a crying child would make a more difficult subject. Sofonisba took it as a challenge, and responded with a drawing of her younger brother crying out in pain after being bitten by a crab.

Although talented, Sofonisba was limited by her sex: as a woman, she was not permitted to study anatomy or draw from life, which prevented her from undertaking the more complex, multi-figure religious and historical paintings that were considered the pinnacle of the art form. Instead, she worked creatively with what she had, painting numerous self-portraits and experimenting with more informal, intimate styles of portraiture: her early paintings of her siblings depict her brother and sisters not as tiny adults sitting for a formal portrait, but as children, laughing, playing and joking. Her most famous painting, which features three of her sisters, notably eschews traditionally feminine props such as needlework or prayerbooks, instead depicting the girls engaged in the intellectual game of chess.

As her reputation spread, Sofonisba came to the attention of King Philip II of Spain, who in 1559 invited her to join his court as a lady-in-waiting and painting instructor to his new bride, Elisabeth of Valois. During her time in Spain, Sofonisba painted numerous portraits of Philip, Elisabeth and their family. Around 1571, Philip arranged for Sofonisba to marry the Sicilian Fabrizio de Moncada, providing her with a very respectable dowry. She was widowed several years later in 1579, after which she returned to Cremona, and on the sea voyage home fell in love with the ship’s captain, a Genoese nobleman by the name of Orazio Lomellino. They were married the following January.

By 1584, Sofonisba and Orazio were happily established in Genoa. Here, she continued to paint and became an important salonniere, playing host to various artists and literary figures. She painted her final self-portrait in 1610, aged 78, before her failing eyesight got the better of her. But it seems that even in her final years her mind remained as sharp as ever: after the portraitist Anthony van Dyck visited her in 1623, he wrote admiringly of her considerable memory and wit.

She died in 1625, aged 93. Seven years later, on what would have been her hundredth birthday, her husband placed an inscription on her tomb.

To Sofonisba, my wife, who is recorded among the illustrious women of the world, outstanding in portraying the images of man. Orazio Lomellino, in sorrow for the loss of his great love, in 1632, dedicated this little tribute to such a great woman.